Animal hair-like synthetic fiber

ABSTRACT

Animal hair-like synthetic fiber which comprises thermoplastic synthetic fiber having one or more narrow parts in middle part thereof and one or both sharpened end parts, and satisfying the following relationship: L/D&gt;30, L1/D&gt;30, d&lt;0.7D and d1&lt;0.7D wherein D is a diameter of the biggest part of the fiber, d is an average relative diameter of the narrow part, d1 is an average relative diameter of the sharpened end part, L is a length of the narrow part and L1 is a length of the tapered part of the sharpened end part. The animal hair-like synthetic fiber is employed for producing a pile fabric which has the hand touchness and appearance closely similar to those of natural furs.

United States Patent [1 1 Mihara et al.

[ Dec. 30, 1975 [54] ANIMAL HAIR-LIKE SYNTHETIC FIBER [75] Inventors: Hiromichi Mihara; Yuzuru Yajima;

Yadenji Ide, all of Takasago, Japan [73] Assignee: Kanegafuchi Kagaku Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha, Osaka, Japan 22 Filed: Oct. 15,1973

21 Appl. No.: 406,286

[30] Foreign Application Priority Data Oct. 16, 1972 Japan 47-103885 [52] US. Cl. 428/399; 428/85; 428/97 [51] Int. Cl. D03D 27/00; D02G 3/00 [58] Field of Search... 161/179, 181, 62, 64, 65; 57/140 .1; 428/399, 400, 401, 85, 97

[56] References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,370,112 2/1945 Truitt 161/179 X 3,439,084 4/1969 Ono et al. 161/179 X 3,439,489 4/1969 Holton et al..... l6l/l79 X 3,587,221 6/1971 Buzano 161/179 X F Ma 3,683,610 8/1972 Buzano l6l/l79 X Primary ExaminerLorraine T. Kendell Attorney, Agent, or FirmArmstrong, Nikaido &

Wegner [57] ABSTRACT part.

The animal hair-like synthetic fiber is employed for producing a pile fabric which has the hand touchness and appearance closely similar to those of natural furs.

3 Claims, 2 Drawing Figures d/ D d D HM US. Patent Dec. 30, 1975 3,930,106

ANIMAL HAIR-LIKE SYNTHETIC FIBER BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to an animal hair-like synthetic fiber, particularly to an animal hair-like synthetic fiber being capable of providing a pile fabric which has the hand touchness and appearance closely similar to those of natural furs.

Many attempts have been made for preparing an animal hair-like synthetic fiber being capable of providing a pile fabric having the hand touchness similar to that of natural furs. For instance, such attempts include various proposals concerning the length, thickness and sectional shape of a fiber, the sharpening of the end of a fiber and the crimping of a fiber. These techniques were employed alone or in combination to give an appropriate property. Especially, in the pile fabric prepared by employing a fiber having sharpened end, the hardness resulting from the thickness of a fiber is relatively diminished and a softness appears, but these effects are not sufficient in comparison with natural furs.

With respect to the animal hairs of mink, marten, rabbit or the like having relatively short hairs and fox having relatively long hairs among animals, the relationship between the pile length and the pile diameter was measured. The results are shown in the following Table 1.

Table 1 Animal Class Pile diameter Pile length* Downy hair 20 I3 to 16 Mink Middle hair 50 18 to 22 (back) Guard hair 85 60 25 to 27 I25 Mink Downy hair I5 8 to 10 (abdomi- Middle hair 40 I4 to l6 nal re- Guard hair 82 5O If) to 20 gion) ll5 Downy hair l8 l3 Marten Middle hair 55 20 Guard hair 87 40 23 to 27 150 Downy hair 25 13 Rabbit Middle hair 50 30 Guard hair 55 25 32 to 38 I00 Downy hair 50 Fox Middle hair 44 65 Guard hair 68 50 80 to 89 lOO (Note) "Figures indicate the mean value of data obtained by measuring of more than one thousand of hairs.

"Upper figure indicates the minimum value and under figure indicates the maximum value,

In natural furs, the guard hairs or the middle hairs affect the hand touchness appearing on the surface thereof and these hairs are extremely thick and long. On the other hand, the downy hairs which are thin and short affect the heat insulation and the elasticity of natural furs. In case of producing a pile fabric as an imitation fur by employing an acrylic fiber, a fiber having a thickness of to I20 deniers is required as one corresponding to a guard hair or a middle hair of natural fur. However, it had been found that such a fiber, even if it was that having a sharpened end, endowed a pile fabric with only softness of the surface thereof and a hand touchness similar to that of a natural fur was not absolutely guaranteed. Moreover, it had become apparent that a knownaminal hair-like fiber having a sharpened end could not realized the change of lie of hair, such as delicate change of hair rustling in a gentle wind, which is one of the characteristics of natural furs and results from the flexibility of the tissue of animal skins and the parallelism of animal hairs.

OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide a novel animal hair-like synthetic fiber being capable of endowing a pile fabric for the imitation fur with the hand touchness, the appearance and the change of lie of hair closely similar to those of natural fur.

The other object of the invention is to provide a novel pile fabric having the hand touchness, the appearance and the change of lie of hair closely similar to those of natural fur.

These and other objects of the invention will be apparent from the following description.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING FIG. 1 shows a survey sectional view of an animal hair-like synthetic fiber of the present invention.

FIG. 2 shows a device for measuring the hardness of DETAILED DESCRIPTION It has now been found that the above objects can be attained by an animal hair-like synthetic fiber which comprises a thermoplastic synthetic fiber having one or more narrow parts in the middle part thereof and one or both sharpened end parts, and satisfying the following relationship:

L/D 30, LI/D 30, a 0.70 and a, 0.70 wherein D is a diameter of the biggest part of the fiber, d is an average relative diameter of the narrow part, d is an average relative diameter of the sharpened end part, L is a length of the narrow part and L is a length of the tapered part of the sharpened end part.

In general, in a pile fabric prepared by employing a synthetic fiber as a pile fiber, it is well known that a pile fiber being thin and long gives a soft hand touchness and a pile fiber being thick and short gives a hard and coarse hand touchness. However, since the splendid hand touchness and apperance of natural furs results from the flexibility and elasticity of animal skin tissue and the closed parallelism of hairs thereof, it is difficult to obtain the same characteristics as those of natural furs even by producing the pile system as shown in Table l in a pile fabric by means of a synthetic fiber. That is to say, in case of employing a fiber having a coarse denier as a pile fiber, the fibers planted on a knitting fabric are directed in nonparallel with each other in the direction perpendicular to the knitting fabric but at random in various directions to spoil the appearance of pile fabric and give a roughly hard and coarse hand touchness. 0n the other hand, in case of employing a fiber having a fine denier as a pile fiber, the fibers on a knitting fabric can be directed in parallel with each other but cannot give a good hand touchness due to their fine denier and in case the length of a pile is more than 10 to 15 mm., pilling is readily formed by rubbing to remarkably drop the quality of product. In order to prevent such a pilling, a fiber having a coarse denier must be employed together with a fiber having a fine denier in a manner that the former comes out on the surface of a pile fabric compared with the latter.

According to the present invention, it has become possible to obtain the hand touchness and appearance similar to those of natural furs as well as the effect to avoid the formation of pilling by making a fiber having a coarse denier narrow at the part thereof which will be caught by the knitting yarns of a knitting fabric as a base fabric of a pile fabric, that is to say, by providing the fiber with one or more narrow parts in any middle part thereof to diminish the rough hardness of a fiber having a coarse denier.

In an animal hair-like synthetic fiber, it is essential that the following relationship:

L/I) 30. L,/D 30, d 0.71) and d, 0.70

be satisfied. In case L/D and L /D, respectively, are not more than 30 or d and (1,, respectively, are more than 0.7D, the splendid effects of the present invention could not be achieved since the fiber becomes hard.

The number of the narrow part of the present animal hair-like fiber is not critical and varies in accordance with the length of the fiber or the method for planting the fiber in a base fabric. For instance, in case of preparing a pile fabric by sliver knitting method, pile fibers are woven into a knitting fabric by the knitting yarn but the position of the pile fiber which is caught by the knitting yarn is not always restricted to that near the middle point of the fiber from the viewpoint of the mechanism of sliver knitting machine. That is to say, a pile fiber having a length of less than 30mm. has many opportunities that the narrow part thereof is caught by a knitting yarn and therefore, in case of a pile fiber having such a length, only one narrow part is sufficient. On the other hand, a pile fiber having a length of more than 50 mm. in case it has only one narrow part, has many opportunity that the thickest part thereof is caught by a knitting yarn since L shown in FIG. 1 becomes long. As a result, the obtained pile fabric has a rough hardness. In order to eliminate this disadvantage, more than two narrow parts are preferable.

Examples of the synthetic fibers useful for an animal hair-like fiber include fibers made of at least one member selected from the group consisting of polyacrylonitriles, copolymers of acrylonitrile and vinyl chloride, polyamides, polyesters, polyolefins, polyvinyl chlorides and a blend polymer of polyvinyl chloride and polyvinyl alcohol. Above all, the fibers of polyacrylonitriles, copolymers of acrylonitrile and vinyl chloride, polyvinyl chlorides and a blend polymer of polyvinyl chloride and polyvinyl alcohol are more preferable. These fibers are employed in an undrawn fiber wherein drawing after spinning is not carried out or a low-drawn fiber which is drawn is less than three times.

An embodiment of process for producing the present animal hair-like fiber is as follows: A fiber as a starting material is heated in part and the heated point is drawn to a desired extent by pulling the both sides thereof to the opposite directions each other with a constant speed to give a fiber having a narrow part at the heated point of the center. The above operation is repeated to give a fiber having more than one narrow part. A sharpened end of the fiber is obtained by continuing the pulling in the above operation until the fiber is cut.

The above method is illustrated with reference to a manufacturing apparatus which is one embodiment. As undrawn or low-drawn fiber bundle as a starting fiber bundle is fed into the apparatus through a feed roller to a desired length and the fiber bundle fed is grasped under loading a pressure through an air-cylinder by two pairs of graspers which are arranged with a separation in a vertical direction. Two pairs of graspers are moved to a desired distance upward and downward, respectively, with a constant speed by means of the revolution of a lead screw, with blowing a hot air from injection nozzles to the fiber bundle. On the way, the fiber bundle near the injection nozzles is heat-drawn to be thinner (Procedure 1). Then, the blowing of the hot air is stopped and two pairs of graspers are returned to their original positions and made free. The fiber bundle is further fed into the apparatus to a desired length through the feed roller and the fiber bundle is again grasped by two pairs of graspers. Two pairs of graspers are moved upward and downward, respectively, with a constant speed until the fiber bundle near the injection nozzles of a hot air is cut to give a sharpened end (Procedure 2). The procedures 1 and 2 are repeated alternatively to give the instant animal hair-like fibers having one narrow part in the intermediate thereof. The repetition of the combination of the procedure 1 and the procedure 2 gives the fibers having more than two narrow parts in the intermediate thereof.

The animal hair-like fiber of the present invention is applied to a pile fabric as an imitation fur. Usually, the fiber of the present invention, since it is one corresponding to the guard hair of a natural fur, is employed together with other fibers, such as acrylic fiber having a shorter length and smaller denier corresponding to the downy hair ofa natural fur. The fiber of the present invention is planted into a suitable base fabric such as a knitting fabric. The obtained fabric is backed by an appropriate means such as a resin in order to prevent the piles from falling out and the resultant is subjected to a polishing finish to give a product.

The other applications of the present fiber include a false eyelash, a writing brush, a paint-brush, and the like.

The present invention is more particularly described in the following Examples which are intended as illustrative only since numerous modifications and variations therein will be apparent to those skilled in the art.

EXAMPLE 1 To 20 parts by weight of an acrylonitrile-vinyl chloride (40:60 by weight) copolymer was added 2 parts by weight of a stabilizer and 78 parts by weight of acetone and the mixture was dissolved to give a spinning solution. The spinning solution was subjected to spinning and drawn to an extent of 1.7 times original length after the spinning to give a starting fiber (the denier of a single fiber: 40; the amount of the fiber: 1,000 strands).

The fiber was treated under the following conditions to give the instant fibers having one narrow part in the intermediate thereof.

End of fiber: Both ends are sharpened.

Heating method: by dry hot air Heating temperature: 145C.

Drawing speed: 0.6 m./min.

The particulars of the obtained fibers are as follows:

Lo: about 25 mm.

L and L respectively: 15 to 25 mm.

D: about 65 u.

d and d respectively: less than 30 u.

Shrinking percentage of the narrow part in the intermediate of the fiber: 25 to 30 (in a hot water at C.)

Furthermore, the hardness of the fiber was compared with those of the hair of fox and a conventional acrylic fiber having a denier of 40. The hardness mentioned here was measured by the method as shown in FIG. 2. In FIG. 2, l is a sample to be tested, 2 is a table and 3 is a load. A sample 1 to betested was placed on the table 2 so that the length of 50 mm. was pushed out of the edge of the table. The hardness was estimated from the vertical distance, S, between the face of the table 2 and the top of the sample l'hanging down. The result thereof is shown in Table 2.

From the data of Table 2 it is apparent that the hardness of the animal hair-like fiber of the present invention was remarkably lowered in comparison with that of the conventional acrylic fiber.

EXAMPLE 2 The animal hair-like fibers having two narrow parts in the intermediate thereof and both sharpened ends were produced by the procedure as explained in Example 1. Their particulars are as follows:

Mean fiber length: 150 mm.'

Lo: about 25 mm.

L and L respectively: 15 to 25 mm.

D: about 60 .4..

d and 41,, respectively: less than 30 u.

Shrinking percentage of the narrow parts:

25 to 30 (in a hot water at lC.)

The obtained fibers are subjected to heat treatment of dipping in a boiling water for 30 minutes and then dried in a hot air dryer at 70C.

EXAMPLE 3 The animal hair-like fibers obtained in Example 1 were mixed with other conventional acrylic fibers in the proportion as shown in Table 3.

' M can value A conventional spinning oil for acrylic fibers was applied to the mixed fibers and the oiled fibers were set to a roller card to provide a uniform sliver having a weight of l5g./meter. The sliver was woven into a knitting fabric by a sliver knitting machine to give a pile fabric. The particulars of the knitting fablic employed are as follows:

Knitting yarn: spinning yarn of acrylic fiber yarn count ZOS (English cotton yarn count); 2 ends doubling Course: 23/254 mm.

Weight of the fabric: 0.84 kg./m

Thus obtained pile fabric was backed with acrylic resin. After heat set in a pin tenter dryer, the removing or remaining crimps and the polishing finish were carried out by employing an electric polisher to give a pile fabric.

The pile fabric has a hand touchness and appearance similar to natural furs, and concerning the delicate change of lie of the piles thereof a good result was also obtained.

The product was compared with the fur of fox and the conventional pile fabric produced by employing an acrylic fiber. The test was carried by the method wherein ten observers ranked the samples in the order of decreasing qualities thereof such as hand touchness, appearane and the change of lie of hairs. The results of the test are shown in Table 4. In Table 4, FIGS. 1, 2 and 3 are those showing the order of qualities. 1 is superior to 2 and 2 is superior to 3.

Table 4 Pile fabric with the animal hairlike fiber of the present invention Pile fabric with the conventional acrylic fiber Observer Fur of fox NNb- MMNNNN O wuwwwwwuuw Mean rank 1.0

From the Table 4, it is clear that nine persons among 10 answered that the pile fabric produced by employing the animal hair-like fiber was better than that produced by employing the conventional acrylic fiber. Furthermore, the product shows a good crease recovery and pilling resistance against rubbing.

EXAMPLE 4 The animal hair-like fibers obtained in Example 2 were mixed with other conventional acrylic fibers in the proportion as shown in Table 5.

Table 5 Fiber Denier Length(mm.) by weight Animal hairl50 50 like fiber Conventional 5 76 25 acrylic fiber acrylic resin in order to prevent the tufts thereof from falling out. After heat set, the elimination of the fibers fallen out and the polishing finish were carried out by a hair dryer and a brush to give a pile cloth having a good hand touchness like a mohair.

t The product was compared with the fur of mohair and the pile cloth produced by employing a conventional acrylic fiber according to the same method as explained in Example 3. The results thereof are shown in Table 6.

Furthermore, the product showed a good pilling resistance against rubbing.

What we claim is:

1. An animal hair-like synthetic fiber which comprises a thermoplastic synthetic fiber having one or more narrow parts in middle part thereof and one or both sharpened end parts, and satisfying the following relationship:

L/l) 30, L,/l) 30, a 0.71) and a, 0.71)

wherein D is a diameterof the biggest part of the fiber, d is an average relative diameter of the narrow part, d, is an average relative diameter of the sharpened end part, L is a length of the narrow part and L, is a length of the tapered part of the sharpended end part, said thermoplastic synthetic fiber being at least one member selected from the group consisting of polyacrylonitriles, copolymers of acrylonitrile and vinyl chloride, polyamides, polyesters, polyolefins, polyvinyl chlorides and a blend of polyvinyl chloride and polyvinyl alcohol. 2. The animal hair-like synthetic fiber of claim 1, wherein the said thermoplastic synthetic fiber is polyacrylonitriles, copolymers of acrylonitrile and vinyl chloride, polyvinyl chlorides or a blend of polyvinyl chloride and polyvinyl alcohol. 3. A pile fabric comprising A. animal hair-like synthetic fibers comprising thermoplastic synthetic fibers having one or more narrow parts in middle part thereof and one or both sharpened end parts, and satisfying the following relationship:

L) 30, L,/D 30-, (1 01!) and d, 0.71)

wherein D is a diameter of the biggest part of the fibers, d is anaverage relative diameter of the narrow part, a is an average relative diameter of the sharpened end part, L is a length of the narrow part and L, is a length of the tapered part of the sharpended end part, and

B. a fabric on which the said fibers are planted, said thermoplastic syntheti'cfiber being at least one member selected from the group consisting of polyacrylonitriles, copolymers of acrylonitrile and vinyl chloride, polyamides, polyesters, polyolefins, polyvinyl chlorides and a blend polymer of polyvinyl chloride and polyvinyl alcohol. 

1. AN ANIMAL HAIR-LIKE SYNTHETIC FIBER WHICH COMPRISES A THERMOPLASTIC SYNTHETIC FIBER HAVING ONE OR MORE NARROW PARTS IN MIDDLE PART THEREOF AND ONE OR BOTH SHARPENED END PARTS, AND SATISFYING THE FOLLOWING RELATIONSHIP:
 2. The animal hair-like synthetic fiber of claim 1, wherein the said thermoplastic synthetic fiber is polyacrylonitriles, copolymers of acrylonitrile and vinyl chloride, polyvinyl chlorides or a blend of polyvinyl chloride and polyvinyl alcohol.
 3. A pile fabric comprising A. animal hair-like synthetic fibers comprising thermoplastic synthetic fibers having one or more narrow parts in middle part thereof and one or both sharpened end parts, and satisfying the following relationship: L/D > 30, L1/D > 30, d < 0.7D and d1 < 0.7D wherein D is a diameter of the biggest part of the fibers, d is an average relative diameter of the narrow part, d1 is an average relative diameter of the sharpened end part, L is a length of the narrow part and L1 is a length of the tapered part of the sharpended end part, and B. a fabric on which the said fibers are planted, Said thermoplastic synthetic fiber being at least one member selected from the group consisting of polyacrylonitriles, copolymers of acrylonitrile and vinyl chloride, polyamides, polyesters, polyolefins, polyvinyl chlorides and a blend polymer of polyvinyl chloride and polyvinyl alcohol. 